Wednesday, March 13, 2013

SAUSAGES RECALLED - AGAIN AND AGAIN

Recently, sausages have been in the food safety news in the U.S. We've had both "foreign materials," and bacteria. That's enough.

If you have read The Safe Food Handbook (the book, that is, now in second edition and also available on Kindle), you would have checked out the box in the Meat and Poultry section (pp.134-135) entitled "Try Regulating a Sausage." This box illustrates what sausages contain, how they are made, and how difficult it is to inspect them. To tell the truth, I almost stopped eating sausages after doing this research.

The last paragraph of the box says: "Are you surprised that sausages are a commonly contaminated food product? Anything in them could be the culprit ingredient - one of the meats used, other components such as milk powder, and even the spices. Or the source of contamination could be one of those plant workers or pieces of equipment."...

Yesterday, the news focused on a Hot Springs Packing Co., in Arkansas, having to recall 6,120 pounds of chicken polish sausage and chicken breakfast link products due to possible contamination with Listeria monocytogenes bacteria (beware pregnant women!). On February 27, Schmalz's European Provisions, in Springfield, New Jersey, recalled some 8,424 pounds of chicken and apple sausage that could contain small pieces of plastic. On February 21, Smithfield Packing Company, of Virginia, recalled approximately 38,000 pounds of pork sausage because they could have contained small pieces of plastic, probably from gloves.

So, what else is new? And, how many of those delicious sausages got thought the inspection process with all kinds of nasty things, even though they should have been caught?

(Writing this after a totally delicious dinner of "bangers and mash." Oh...oh....)